Lives and works in Iceland.
For his exhibition in Venice, Pétursson has constructed a tunnel-like
structure bisecting the Icelandic pavilion. Pétursson’s 16
meter long structure, which juts out of the building, and then tapers
at its end to contain a homemade organ pipe built by the artist, functions
as a home for the Diabolus tone, which in medieval times was called la
Quinte-du-loup and banned from the ritual by the Catholic Church. The
Diabolus tone is formed by the intersection of two separate tones, one
measuring 61.8hz, here produced by a loudspeaker reverberating under and
in the organ pipe, and the other measuring 44.7hz, produced by an air
pump intermittently blowing through the pipe. Together the two tones form
a heavy interference wave of 17hz-the Diabolus. Mixing medieval methodology
and up to date electronic technology, Pétursson’s work conflates
past and present, and his tunnel becomes a kind of time chamber, a conduit
between the centuries.
Gregory Volk
New York, March 2001 http://finnbogi.com